Suhail Khan
earned a B.A. in political science from UC Berkeley in 1991 and a J.D. from the
University of Iowa in 1995.

As a Capitol Hill staffer in the mid-1990s,
Khan convinced
then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to reserve a room in the Capitol for Muslims to
pray. Subsequently, numerous extremists—including
the cleric Anwar Awlaki, now a known affiliate of al-Qaeda—led prayers and spoke
there.

In 1999 Khan spoke at an ISNA event where he praised
the “mujihadeen” who had martyred themselves “for the cause of Islam”; he
praised “the early Muslims [who] loved death more than the oppressors loved
life”; he lamented
that Muslim Americans "are under attack" and "are often faced with
discrimination, harassment and outright hatred"; and he urged his
co-religionists to be "prepared to give our lives for the cause of Islam." Khan
also expressed
hostility toward federal law-enforcement and sympathy for terrorist
suspects.

At that time, Khan was working for Tom Campbell, a Republican
congressman from a heavily Muslim district in Northern California, to eliminate
the Justice Department’s use of so-called “secret evidence” in deportation cases
involving Arab immigrants suspected of terrorism. Khan worked
that legislation specifically for Sami Al-Arian, whose brother-in-law,
Mazen al-Najjar, was facing
terrorism-related deportation proceedings where federal immigration officials
were using classified intelligence which the suspect was not permitted to see.
Khan tried
to rescue Najjar by helping to draft the legislation—the “Secret Evidence
Repeal Act of 2001”—which, had it been passed, would have banned the use of
secret evidence.

Khan also defended
Al-Arian against conservative allegations that he himself was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader.
Under the very law that Khan was trying to abolish, Al-Arian would ultimately be
arrested, convicted, and sentenced to federal prison for his PIJ
affiliations.

After George W. Bush's presidential election victory in
2000, Khan became a staff
member in the White House Office of Public Liaison (OPL), where he was given
responsibility for selecting which Muslims would be allowed access to the
President and his team. In this role, Khan helped
facilitate a White House meeting with Sami al-Arian, even though the latter
was already under FBI investigation.

After the San Francisco
Chronicle published a 2001 report
tying Osama bin Laden's chief
lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to
the Santa Clara mosque where Khan's late father had been board chairman, Suhail
Khan was removed from the OPL and was given a political
appointment in the Department of Transportation. He spent the rest of the
Bush administration there, ultimately serving as the Assistant
to the Secretary for Policy. In that capacity, Khan had access
to classified information on such matters as port, rail, waterway and highway
security, as well as the movement of nuclear weapons and other hazardous
materials.

According to a December 2003 press
release issued by the Islamic Society of North America, Khan served
on one of that organization's committees. Over the years, he has repeatedly been
a featured
speaker at events hosted by ISNA, MSA, CAIR, the Muslim
Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Institute established by Grover Norquist.

Also thanks largely to Norquist’s sponsorship, Khan has been able
to infiltrate other conservative circles as well. In addition to attending, for
years, Norquist’s influential Wednesday Group Meetings, Khan has cultivated a
reputation as a “conservative leader” by dint of his chairmanship
of “the Conservative Inclusion Coalition,” which meets at the office of
Norquist's “Americans for Tax Reform.” Khan also has convened periodic meetings
with young congressional staff members, some of whom work for legislators in
positions of leadership.

After the election of President Barack Obama, Khan teamed
up with Imam Mohamed Magid, Obama’s Muslim outreach partner, to do
interfaith outreach with evangelical Christian leaders in the South.

By
early 2011, Khan had become a spokesman
for the Congressional Muslim Staff Association, where he worked with a Muslim
convert named Jihad Saleh Williams. Khan also briefed
Republican leadership staff on various issues and sought to establish a
relationship with some of incoming House Speaker John Boehner’s people.
Moreover, Khan gained
the trust of key staffers running the Republican Study Committee, the caucus
for conservatives in the House of Representatives.